He Survived!

Our son, Doug, had arthroscopic surgery today on his knee to reconstruct his ACL(anterior cruciate ligament) and have a microfracture surgery to attempt to regrow cartilage that had to be removed because it was torn. I took a picture of him with my new camera, but I cannot seem to upload pictures that are saved with the Kodak camera. So you don't get to see him looking groggy and out of it as he was when he got home. By now, several hours later, he sounds and feels more alert, but he was pretty out of it at noon. Of course, he had only come out of surgery at about 9:30, so he was doing amazingly well.

All of Doug's knee troubles started during basketball camp before his senior year in high school, about 10 1/2 years ago. He had a twisting fall which tore some cartilage and stretched the ACL. About six months later, it was still bothering him, so he had arthroscopic surgery to clean up the cartilage. He recovered quickly and didn't require any therapy. He went back to school 3 days after the surgery. Over the years, he would get an occasional twinge, and the knee would pop out of joint once in a while, but he managed to do whatever he wanted to do, and last year, he was able to do some rigorous training to try out for the fire department. He made it all the way to the last step before being eliminated for the training class. So he decided to try again this fall, and he had started the training sessions once again. However, in October, he jumped off a counter at work and landed wrong on the leg, and the knee joint finally cried out and said, "Enough already! I can't take any more of your abuse. Fix me once and for all, or I won't let you be a firefighter at all!" What could he do but go and see about getting it repaired? He decided to wait until after the holidays, and set it up for today.

As the time passed, he became more and more apprehensive, wondering what he was letting himself in for and whether he would ever be able to use the knee correctly, but today the waiting was over, and we went to the hospital very early this morning for the procedure. He was first on the list for the surgery, and it took just about as long as the doctor said it would. Now the fun begins. He will have several weeks of physical therapy and workouts at home on the continuous movement machine. He will be off work for a few months, during which he will catch up with his movie watching, I imagine. After all this work, however, the doctor assured us that his knee will be almost as good as new, and he will be able to do most anything, so he can go back to try for the next firefighter classin the fall . He'll make it yet! :)

Meanwhile, the the wait and the surgery are over, and now he can get down to the business of recovering. Life is good....